My excess verbage.

An uninvited guest

This poem dates from a period of anxiety a few years ago, during which I had to keep offering up excuses to explain my non attendance at social engagements. I was thinking of ever more outlandish reasons for not coming to things…which then evolved into a character who keeps saying that he’s not going to come to your party. But he definitely is. And he’s going to ruin it.

I’m afraid I cannot come to the party
as I shall be too busy sanding my teeth
do not waste your fancy invites
on the likes of me

yes,
there’s no way that I can attend the aforementioned social engagement
as it appears I cannot be trusted

I go to pieces in these sorts of situations
it’s an exhaustively documented fact
that my brain is likely to leak a resinous tar
onto your plush carpets

other commitments preclude me
from sharing in the festivities
I think I told you this already?
you will not have to nail dustsheets to the walls
there will be no reversal of gravity
or messy accidents with the cutlery

please think for a moment about the potentially scandalous fall-out
from the ill-considered and downright dangerous
forfeits I have been formulating for the last six years

the soiree will not be improved by the taciturn gentleman
boiling up a soup out of moths in the kitchen at three in the morning

besides I cannot dance with this live scorpion
sellotaped to my ankle
and I am unable to make small-talk whilst my mouth
is full of cake mixture

it is an unfortunate by-product of my non-attendance that
the fashion supplements will not be breathlessly reporting
the eyeliner made out of smeared bird-shit and biro-ink
which I had planned to model
or the rakish tilt of the
offal strapped to my head

look, have a great time, go on, enjoy yourselves
you don’t want to be constantly worrying whether or not
“Albert” might come out to play
incidentally, he says he’s sorry about what happened last time
and please can you give him his staple-gun back